‘I don’t know why I did not hear’
Teen’s killing happened feet from homes. But no one heard a thing.
Dwight Grant’s life ended agonizingly slowly and in plain sight. But no one was watching.
For 31 minutes, the 18-year-old was beaten in the face and stabbed with a knife and a sword, while one of his three attackers was on the lookout for anyone who may have passed by the stairwell on the south side of Building B of New Park Towers that night. The lookout told the other two when the sounds of the gruesome attack were becoming too loud, an arrest warrant says.
But there were no frantic calls to 911 that early Sunday evening in mid October. No passers-by in the complex of 290 units apparently saw what would be the last painful minutes of Grant’s life, though the brutal, drawnout killing happened in an area hardly considered secluded.
The stairwell where three teenagers are accused of beating and stabbing Grant to death about 7 p.m. Oct. 17 was just seconds away from his own home and the door of his neighbors across the hall. A busy parking lot where cars regularly drive by is on the other side of the stairway’s wall. Anyone walking on the sidewalk on the south side of the building would have had a clear view of the landing at the top of the seven steps where he was being attacked.
No one saw his body in the bushes 20 steps from the stairwell. No one reported the blood trail that would lead police to the body two days later, after his mother reported him missing.
Residents may not have been watching, but surveillance cameras were.
Surveillance video shows Grant’s lifeless body carried down the steps, just feet from the apartment where he lived with his mother. His attackers then lobbed his body over a railing, in direct line of the security camera, discarding him in the bushes feet from an apartment’s first floor window.
Resident Natalie Brazil has struggled to understand how she, nor anyone else, heard anything.
“I don’t know why I did not hear this baby screaming for help,” Brazil said.
Brazil has lived on the floor above Grant in Building B of New Park Towers for a year. She was home that Sunday evening and said she has lived with guilt since learning the chilling details of Grant’s death.
She can’t wrap her heard around how neither she nor anyone else, saw or heard Grant being attacked in the stairwell, a place where noises are amplified and echo. How was it that this happened so close to people who could have called for help, but didn’t, she wonders.
“That haunts me,” she said.
The community is struggling to understand, too, how no one heard the attack and how three teenagers could plan the killing of a classmate for days, no one stopping to think twice or reporting any of the concerning threats records show Christie Parisien, 17, and Andre Clements III, 17, exchanged six days before the murder. Jaslyn Smith, 16, was filled in on the plan the day of the murder, helped Clements fight Grant and also armed herself with a deadly weapon to carry out the attack, the warrant says. All three cleaned up the stairwell and railing they tossed Grant’s body over, attempting to destroy evidence.
After Clements and Parisien texted about how and when they would lure Grant to his death in the apartment complex, records show Clements texted his ex-girlfriend to tell her to “get used to” Grant not being around anymore.
The girl asked whether there were truly plans to kill Grant. She asked if Clements was going to hurt her, too.
Police believe Grant was killed because he slept with Clements’ ex-girlfriend, an arrest warrant says. Clements,
Smith and Parisien, all students at Miramar High, will face charges of first-degree murder, tampering with evidence and criminal conspiracy as adults.
Students cannot walk the halls of Miramar High without hearing Grant’s name, said 17-year-old Natalia Perez at a vigil for Grant on Tuesday.
Residents of the working-class area describe the apartment as safe and say neighbors do look out for each other.
“Nobody would think that’s something that would happen here,” said Elmo Lee, a resident of the tower for six years.
The teenagers were prepared for someone to hear Grant’s cries. The lengthy police affidavit detailing the surveillance video says Parisien served as lookout at the bottom of the stairs just feet from the parking lot and sidewalk at the front entrance of the Grant’s apartment building.
One woman felt uneasy when she saw Parisien, Smith and Clements cloaked in dark clothing and walking through the complex . The woman told Brazil’s mother she was coming home when she saw them and was disturbed by seeing them in all black. She felt unsafe, went inside her apartment and locked the door.
Surveillance video, according to the police affidavit, shows Parisien, Clements and Smith walking into
New Park Towers at 7:06 p.m. They are dressed in black. Clements and Smith have do-rags over the head. They are wearing face masks and blue latex gloves.
A security camera pointed toward the stairwell captured Parisien waiting on Grant’s floor as Clements and Smith walk up the steps. Grant is captured on tape heading up the stairs, carrying Parisien on his back, when he is confronted in the stairwell.
“You know who I am and why I’m here,” the warrant says Clements told Grant as the four met in the stairs.
Smith dropped a sword onto the concrete ground. Grant tried to run, but Parisien and Clements grabbed him, pushing his back to the wall, records say.
“You know I have to kill you now,” Clements said to Grant, according to records.
Records say Grant begged for his life. He swore he wouldn’t say a word if they would only let him go. He tried to run again but Smith held him down.
Surveillance video show Parisien standing at the bottom of the stairwell, watching for anyone passing by at 7:23 p.m. By then Grant had suffered the blows for 14 minutes.
Records say Grant pleaded for his classmates to kill him then. “End it for him,” Smith told police he said.
The 31-minute struggle ended when Clements stood over Grant, stabbing the sword through his chest, records say.
Grant’s body was left in the bushes near a groundlevel apartment patio. A second-story patio above looks straight down into those bushes.
Miramar Vice Mayor Yvette Colbourne said Sherman Circle is known as a quiet, more affordable residential area for working-class families in Miramar. Many people know someone who lives on this street or have lived there themselves at one point or another.
Crime, compared with the rest of Miramar, is relatively low in Sherman Circle, Colbourne said. It is known to residents for its park, its tennis and volleyball courts and well-lit walking path. Grant’s murder strikes close to home for many, Colbourne said.
“It’s not an area that we feel is in any way that would be tied to something or that would allow for teenagers to come up with something like this,” she said. “It’s very hurtful to the entire community. It just hurts the entire community to know something like this would happen.”